Normative data for the selective reminding test: a random digit dialing sample

Healthy control participants (46 women, M age=44.3 yr., SD=7.6; 29 men) were recruited to undergo a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and serve as a comparison group in a study of cognitive functioning in patients with Lyme isease. Participants were selected using Mitofsky-Waksberg random digit dialing. The Buschke 12-word, six-trial Selective Reminding Test was administered as part of the neuropsychological battery and normative data are presented stratified by age and sex. Performance on alternate forms of this measure were examined. Mean education, intelligence quotient, and Wide Range Achievement Test-3 Reading scores are reported.     

Aging and maintaining intentions over delays: do it or lose it

When execution of retrieved intentions must be briefly delayed, older adults display deficits in performing those intentions (G. O. Einstein, M. A. McDaniel, M. Manzi, B. Cochran, & M. Baker, 2000). This initial finding was extended by showing age-related deficits with 5-s unfilled delays, with instructions to rehearse during the delay, and with divided attention during initial retrieval of the intention. Performance increased with a break at the end of the delay period, such that when combined with full attention (during retrieval), older adults' performance approached that of younger adults. These results suggest that age compromises maintenance of information in awareness. Consequently, when forced to delay execution of retrieved intentions, older adults may rely more on plan reformulation and subsequent retrieval of the intention from long-term memory at the end of the delay.     

The neuroendocrinology of posttraumatic stress disorder: new directions

Studies of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in persons with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have produced variable findings. This review focuses on the factors likely to have affected the outcome of these studies, including population characteristics and experimental design. Also discussed is a possible role for the adrenal neurosteroid dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) as a mediator of HPA axis adaptation to extreme stress and the psychiatric symptoms associated with PTSD. The antiglucocorticoid properties of DHEA may contribute to an upregulation of HPA axis responses as well as mitigate possible deleterious effects of high cortisol levels on the brain in some PTSD subpopulations. The neuromodulatory effects of DHEA and its metabolite DHEAS at gamma-aminobutyric acid and N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors in the brain may contribute to psychiatric symptoms associated with PTSD. The possible importance of other neurohormone systems in modulating HPA axis and symptom responses to traumatic stress is also discussed. Understanding the complex interactions of these stress-responsive neurosteroid and peptide systems may help explain the variability in patterns of HPA axis adaptation, brain changes, and psychiatric symptoms observed in PTSD and lead to better targeting of preventive and therapeutic interventions.     

Newborn infants' sensitivity to perceptual cues to lexical and grammatical words.

In our study newborn infants were presented with lists of lexical and grammatical words prepared from natural maternal speech. The results show that newborns are able to categorically discriminate these sets of words based on a constellation of perceptual cues that distinguish them. This general ability to detect and categorically discriminate sets of words on the basis of multiple acoustic and phonological cues may provide a perceptual base that can help older infants bootstrap into the acquisition of grammatical categories and syntactic structure.     

Self-Regulating Interest: The Moderating Role of Hardiness and Conscientiousness

Sansone, Weir, Harpster, and Morgan (1992) found that individuals intentionally regulated their interest in an activity when they had both the need (the task was boring) and a reason to exert the effort (an ostensible health benefit). The present study examined Hardiness and Conscientiousness as moderators of this self-regulatory process when individuals had the option of quitting in addition to the options of persisting and of engaging in interest-enhancing strategies. Undergraduates performed a boring copying activity under instructions to stop when they felt they could evaluate the task. Half were told that their evaluations would help researchers develop good jobs for others (Benefit). Results indicated high hardy individuals copied more letters when they were provided the additional Benefit information, and this effect was mediated through their attempt to make the task more interesting. High conscientious individuals persisted longer than individuals lower in conscientiousness independently of the benefit manipulation or strategy use. Implications of individual differences in self-regulation of motivation are discussed.     

Belief attribution in deaf and hearing infants

Based on anticipatory looking and reactions to violations of expected events, infants have been credited with 'theory of mind' (ToM) knowledge that a person's search behaviour for an object will be guided by true or false beliefs about the object's location. However, little is known about the preconditions for looking patterns consistent with belief attribution in infants. In this study, we compared the performance of 17- to 26-month-olds on anticipatory looking in ToM tasks. The infants were either hearing or were deaf from hearing families and thus delayed in communicative experience gained from access to language and conversational input. Hearing infants significantly outperformed their deaf counterparts in anticipating the search actions of a cartoon character that held a false belief about a target-object location. By contrast, the performance of the two groups in a true belief condition did not differ significantly. These findings suggest for the first time that access to language and conversational input contributes to early ToM reasoning.     

'To Paint the Portrait of a Bird': analytic work from the perspective of a 'developmental' Jungian

Jungians who are trained in the so-called 'Developmental School' straddle the two worlds of psychoanalysis and classical Jungian thinking. This is not always an easy position in which to be, but if the tensions can be held it is potentially a rich and creative way of working. In this paper I attempt to explore this position using the poem, 'To Paint the Portrait of a Bird' by Jacques Prévert as a metaphor for the analytic endeavour. From this perspective I hope to illustrate the importance of being able on the one hand to hold and maintain a clear frame for the careful and detailed exploration of the transference within which the more malign aspects of the psyche might be expressed, and, on the other, to allow the alchemical process of mutual transformation that lies outside the conscious understanding of the analytic couple.     

Recognition by association: Within‐ and cross‐modality associative priming with faces and voices

Recent literature has raised the suggestion that voice recognition runs in parallel to face recognition. As a result, a prediction can be made that voices should prime faces and faces should prime voices. A traditional associative priming paradigm was used in two studies to explore within‐modality priming and cross‐modality priming. In the within‐modality condition where both prime and target were faces, analysis indicated the expected associative priming effect: The familiarity decision to the second target celebrity was made more quickly if preceded by a semantically related prime celebrity, than if preceded by an unrelated prime celebrity. In the cross‐modality condition, where a voice prime preceded a face target, analysis indicated no associative priming when a 3‐s stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used. However, when a relatively longer SOA was used, providing time for robust recognition of the prime, significant cross‐modality priming emerged. These data are explored within the context of a unified account of face and voice recognition, which recognizes weaker voice processing than face processing.     

Eight-Year Latent Class Trajectories of Academic and Social Functioning in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

We examined trajectories of academic and social functioning in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to identify those who might be at risk for especially severe levels of academic and social impairment over time. We estimated a series of growth mixture models using data from two subsamples of children participating in the NIMH Collaborative Multisite Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) including those with at least baseline and 96-month data for reading and mathematics achievement (n = 392; 77.3% male; M age = 7.7; SD = 0.8) or social skills ratings from teachers (n = 259; 74.9% male; M age = 7.6; SD = 0.8). We compared latent trajectories for children with ADHD to mean observed trajectories obtained from a local normative (i.e., non-ADHD) comparison group (n = 289; 80.6% male; M age = 9.9; SD = 1.1). Results indicated six latent trajectory classes for reading and mathematics and four classes for teacher social skills ratings. There was not only a relationship between trajectories of inattention symptoms and academic impairment, but also a similarly strong association between trajectory classes of hyperactive-impulsive symptoms and achievement. Trajectory class membership correlated with socio-demographic and diagnostic characteristics, inattention and hyperactive-impulsive symptom trajectories, externalizing behavior in school, and treatment receipt and dosage. Although children with ADHD display substantial heterogeneity in their reading, math, and social skills growth trajectories, those with behavioral and socio-demographic disadvantages are especially likely to display severe levels of academic and social impairment over time. Evidence-based early screening and intervention that directly address academic and social impairments in elementary school-aged children with ADHD are warranted. The ClinicalTrials.gov identifier is NCT00000388.